WAG Introduces Art Camp for Kids

The Winnipeg Art Gallery has something new to offer kids this summer—special art camps for children aged 6 to 12. Four- and five-day summer camps will take young artists all over the city. Kids in the AnimaniART camp will head out to the Assiniboine Park Zoo to observe the animals. Junior Architects will go to the Legislative Building and the St. Boniface Museum to study architecture. And Graffiti Camp takes them to The Forks to explore graffiti art and everywhere to investigate Winnipeg’s dazzling murals, voted one of Canada’s top ten attractions by Where magazine in 2009.

The camps run various weeks from July 11 to August 19, from 8:30am to 5pm. Each camp includes field trips, visits to the Gallery exhibitions, and art classes. The camp culminates in the display of an art show for proud parents. Registration is on now. Call 789.1766 or visit wag.ca.

“We have always held short two-hour summer classes for children,” says WAG Educator Michael Boss. “But this is the first time we are offering full-day, full-week camps. Kids can be dropped off anytime after 8:15am and picked up between 4:15 and 5pm, ideal for working parents. The first day of the camp is a field trip relevant to the camp theme. The rest of the week is spent creating art projects inspired by that theme, visiting the exhibitions on view in the galleries, a film in our Muriel Richardson Auditorium, and going on a half-day field trip. It’s a full schedule and the kids are going to love it.”

Approaching its centenary in 2012, the Winnipeg Art Gallery is Canada’s oldest civic art gallery and Manitoba’s leading visual arts institution. With a collection of over 24,000 objects spanning many centuries and cultures – including the world’s largest collection of contemporary Inuit art – the WAG is constantly moving between the historical and the contemporary in an effort to engage a growing public with the power of art in our lives.